M. Night Shyamalan. I probably don’t need to say more to give you proper preparation for your experience watching this movie. It’s not that his name necessarily tells you everything that is going to happen during a movie. More likely, it should temper your expectations regarding the quality of the film you’re about to watch. The man has had a tumultuous career as a director, starting out strong with The Sixth Sense, plummeting to the depths of The Last Airbender, and clawing his way back to relevance with Split. After a brief quiet period, he’s come out with a new movie every few years for the past decade. All of these have been tepidly received with a fair amount of scrutiny and little praise. Does Trap break the mold or settle into the same pattern?

Pros

Josh Hartnett’s performance is entertaining to watch
Interesting camera angles to make things uncomfortable
Some good moments of tension

Cons

Mostly just a self-indulgent advertisement for M. Night Shyamalan’s daughter’s career
Cooper gets away with things too easily all the time
Not compelling enough to warrant your attention for its full runtime
Tone is somewhat disjointed

Plot & Thoughts

Cooper (Josh Hartnett) is attending the biggest concert in town with his daughter, Riley (Ariel Donoghue). They’re going to watch the biggest pop star in the world, Lady Raven (Saleka Shyamalan)—who is somehow more popular than Taylor Swift or Michael Jackson. It seems like it’s going to be just a simple event of bonding between father and daughter, except there’s an exceptionally large police presence at the stadium. It’s then quickly revealed that Cooper may be a charming firefighter by day, but, by night, he is the local serial killer dubbed The Butcher, and law enforcement is aware that he is attending the event to try to trap him. Cooper, his identity still unknown, is then tasked with trying to find ways out of the event without being stopped and caught by the police.

On paper, the premise of Trap is interesting and seems like a difficult storytelling challenge. Right away, the main challenge is that the film has to make the audience root for the primary antagonist to achieve his goals. It’s not impossible, as there have been plenty of instances in which the main monster of the movie or show is compelling in some way, such as Scarface or Daredevil. To pull it off, you need a solid script and a talented actor capable of making the audience empathize with the villain. While the script doesn’t do much to make Cooper compelling, his actor does some heavy lifting. Josh Hartnett may have been mostly just a heartthrob for teenage girls at the start of his career, but he’s definitely evolved and improved since then, because he does a commendable job of carrying the film with his performance. He’s convincing in his portrayal of a mentally unstable man putting on a façade in a public setting while trying to still be a “loving” father to his daughter. When he’s allowed to be a creepy guy, he pulls it off as well.

Where things get less believable is in how Cooper is able to get away with everything. He’s not just a serial killer who has managed to fool everyone into believing he’s just a humble, loving father. He’s also a super genius who has a plan and backstory for every situation, except when he’s somewhat easily outsmarted by several characters in the final act. The big challenge of Trap is in continuously putting Cooper in a situation where he has to figure out how to escape, and does, but still retaining the constant tension. After the fourth or fifth diversion and getaway, it just became a drinking game rule for how often and easily he was able to lie and figure out a solution to the immediate problem. His ease of escape deflated all the tension in Trap before the movie was halfway over. It starts to regain its footing in the final act when he’s finally not just winning every time, but that’s also because he just suddenly loses some brain cells and better judgment.

Cooper’s ability to diffuse every tense situation is not where I have my biggest issue with the movie. One constant problem that Trap has is that its director is determined to make you like his daughter’s music, which I don’t. A majority of the film takes place at the Lady Raven concert. Therefore, this obligates the film to play almost a dozen songs in which Salkea Shyamalan sings. After only a few seconds into the first song, the Mute button became our new best friend. Just like how Cooper’s ability to escape a situation established a drinking game rule, so did the frequency of Lady Raven songs we were forced to endure at the expense of progressing the plot.

Trap is less than two hours in length, but its plot is just too thin to carry the whole experience. This is why the numerous musical numbers feel like padding to break up the instances in which Cooper finds himself in a new predicament. This also creates an issue in the final act of the film in which Cooper’s identity is revealed to various important individuals, and the story takes place outside of the concert arena. The final act of Trap goes on for much longer than you expect, and not in a good way. The film also commits the sin of telling the audience more than they need to know about Cooper and his backstory than is necessary during this act, and it refocuses on details that were not really important to the first two acts. As a result, the whole experience ends up feeling disjointed and hollow.

TL;DR

There’s not much to say about Trap. It has some interesting ideas and decent performances, but it’s a very mixed bag that does not fully achieve all of its goals. There are a lot of instances in which certain directing styles of Shyamalan make their way into the movie, for better or worse, and it wouldn’t be one of his movies without making an appearance at some point. However, it mostly feels like this movie is just an idea for a TV show episode that is wrapped around a promotion for his daughter to make it more than 90 minutes. In better hands and with a more interesting cast of characters, Trap could have worked, but it didn’t.

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